If you take a look at the list of contributors to the San Francisco-based novel, No Rest for the Dead, it reads like a mystery writers’ hall of fame: Jeffrey Deaver, Diana Gabaldon, John Lescoart, Faye Kellerman, R.L. Stine, Alexander McCall Smith, Kathy Reichs, Michael Palmer…

All of these writers were invited by Andrew Gulli, managing editor for The Strand, a mystery magazine based in Michigan, to collaboratively write a murder mystery. And, there’s a twist to this murder mystery – it just might save lives. Reporter Max Pringle investigates.

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“There is always that case, the one that keeps me awake at night, the one that got away. It’ll always be there, gnawing at the edges of my mind. It doesn’t matter that 10 years have passed, it doesn’t matter that the case is officially closed. An innocent woman was executed, I was the one who helped make it happen…”

MAX PRINGLE: These are the words excerpted from the diary of former San Francisco Police Detective Jon Nunn – a fictional former detective, that is. Nunn’s a character in No Rest for the Dead. The author of this particular section is Andrew Gulli. But he didn’t write the whole book – not even close.

ANDREW GULLI: I would say in the history of publishing there’s never been a serial novel with this many best-selling authors.

Twenty-six, to be exact, ranging from R.L. Stine to Jeffery Deaver. Stine is known for his popular Goosebumps series of children’s novels, while Deaver is famous for his nail-biting thrillers, the most recent being a James Bond reboot.

GULLI: It’s a sort of a relay race: You have to pass the baton smoothly and you can’t make it impossible for the other person to race ahead with their chapter.

Gulli may not have written every word, but he did pull the whole thing together. It took him four months and a lot of arm twisting – that is, coordinating. Author T. Jefferson Parker, reached at a hotel in Atlantic City while on tour, describes says the process was very collaborative.

T. JEFFERSON PARKER: They inspired me and guided me and also gave me the freedom to add some of my own “T. Jefferson Parkerness” to it.

Parker and fellow author and friend John Lescroart stayed in email and phone contact throughout the project and built on each other’s ideas.

PARKER: It was really kind of fun once I got going.

Very briefly, here’s the novel’s plot – told with some help from four of its authors.

GULLI: It’s a philandering husband who is found completely decayed in an Iron Maiden in Berlin.

Rosemary is tried and executed for the murder. But 10 years later, doubts begin to emerge. So Nunn hatches a plan…

JOHN LESCROART: …Kind of calls everyone back together for a memorial of the execution date.

Nunn’s life has unraveled because of the guilt over his role in Rosemary’s execution. He’s lost his job, his marriage, and he’s turned to drink.

JEFFERY DEAVER: The flawed cowboy who’s done something maybe he shouldn’t have done a long time ago, but he’s essentially a stand up guy.

And through some clever sleuthing, he begins to piece together what actually happened.

DEAVER: Nobody’s going to get anything over on him.

“I knew those scumbags would all come out to mark the occasion. They’d have to. Snakes can’t hide under rocks all their lives. To give the appearance of having nothing to hide, they’d all be there; that’s what I was counting on.”

Without giving too much away, let’s just say that some of the suspects go to great lengths to stop Nunn from uncovering the truth.

LESCROART: This is an amazing ending. It’s a cool, unexpected, really good ending.

GULLI: This has to be like a finely tuned orchestra. And it was not easy, but at the end of the day it all just ended up working out.

I met up with John Lescroart in an East Bay coffee shop to talk about the writing process. He agreed to write a few chapters as a favor to Gulli, who’s a friend. But he insisted that those chapters come towards the beginning of the novel.

LESCROART: …Because I find that the earlier you show up in one of these kind of books, the more options you have and everybody else can kind of follow your lead. You can set the bar in terms of how high or how low it’s going to be.

But, Lescroart says once he saw the lineup of talent assembled for the project, almost all his doubts fell away. And he wasn’t disappointed.

LESCROART: …Because when I went through and read this book it shocked me how it came across as tremendously cool and different voices, but really the overriding work hung together as one novel.

It also didn’t hurt that he got to set the story where he sets most of his novels: San Francisco.

LESCROART: …One of the terrific places to set any kind of a mystery, A.) because it’s small enough that really everybody does know everybody else, and B.) because it’s big enough that you can have real secrets and a real mystery, and C, D, E, and F? You’ve got the crazy politics, the crazy weather, the vast disparity in income classes.

And then there’s the city’s unique atmospherics, which make it an ideal setting for a mystery.

“For a long moment, cocooned in the warmth of his Lexus, Ballard simply sat behind the wheel and let the motor run, watching the mist settle on the windshield, almost as if it were actually raining. But there was no real rain, only the damned perennial fog. On the dashboard, he noted the external temperature – 43 degrees – and shook his head with disgust. The first day of summer. Ridiculous.”

By this point, you might think you’ve heard the whole story of No Rest for the Dead. But you haven’t. As with any good mystery, this one’s got a little twist.

Not just any project would get all these writers to work together. This one was for a good cause. All the proceeds from sales of No Rest for the Dead will benefit the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society. And so it happens that a suspense story about death might end up helping save lives.

For Crosscurrents, I’m Max Pringle.

This story included the voice of David LaTulippe. No Rest for the Dead is on bookshelves now from Touchstone Books.